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Renouncing United States Citizenship

Transcript of the above video:

In this video today, we are going to briefly discuss renunciation of US Citizenship. What are we talking about here? Well as the name applies, Americans can choose to renounce their United States citizenship. I am not going to go into great detail about the overall procedure. Basically this is sort of an overview. It is possible to do that. In virtually nearly any case that somebody has discussed this matter with me, I am usually very hesitant to provide any sort of recommendation in doing, in undertaking renunciation of US citizenship. There are certain situations where renouncing one’s US citizenship is perhaps necessary, depending on an individual’s given circumstances. I do know that currently, as at the time of this filming, we are currently experiencing larger and larger numbers, increased numbers of renunciations compared to times past.

That being said, these numbers are still not huge by any stretch of the imagination in real terms but they are increasing. Some of this could be part and parcel with the fact that American tax laws and enforcement regulations and enforcement capabilities as far as dealing with tax matters of Americans overseas, have over the past at least 10 years and have really become quite a bit more stringent, in fact recently and there is another video on this channel discussing this. Basically now, the internal revenue service is in the process of verifying delinquent tax payers and notifying the Department of State of those issues and to go ahead and presumably start revoking passports of US citizens abroad for those who are delinquent in their taxes. This is an extremely delicate subject. There are tax ramifications associated with renunciation of US citizenship, most notably the so called exit tax, whereby an individual, they’re accessed, for tax purposes, prior to renunciation and determination has to be made as to that individual’s tax liability prior to renouncing their US citizenship. Again, I’m not going to get too detailed into all of the procedures involved with this but suffice it to say, rather it is a definitely significant undertaking, it has to be, renunciation of US citizenship has to occur in a sworn setting before a United States consular officer, presumably at the US Consulate or Embassy abroad and again these matters are rather serious. In most cases, a renunciation of citizenship is not probably in the best interest of the individual at issue. Again, there are these minority cases where there are compelling reasons to go ahead and renounce but for the most part, it’s been my experience that it’s a significant step and the gravity of it should be really known by the people that are thinking of undertaking the renunciation so again, while we’re not going to go into details on this, it is a very good idea to contact legal professionals, simply someone who deals with US Immigration matters to go ahead and get a better handle on what the ramifications are in connection with renunciation of American citizenship.